Four inquiries and four fudges

Iain Macwhirter
looks past the spin and asks why four high-profile public inquiries over the
past 12 months have failed to come to satisfying – or even credible –
conclusions

THIS was the year of the official inquiry – Fraser,
Hutton, Butler, Budd. It’s been a growth industry for the great and the good –
and the not so good. For at the end of this epic year in politics, the gold
standard of the official inquiry has been devalued.

How naive we all were 12 months ago, before Lord Hutton’s report into the
death of the former weapons inspector Dr David Kelly. Hutton was a popular hero
for most of his inquiry – a fearless seeker of the truth who had prised the lid
off Whitehall and forced into the public domain all those hot-headed pre-war
e-mails that had been circulating around Number 10. Documents normally kept
secret for 30 years were suddenly out there: Jonathan Powell’s questioning the
reliability of WMD intelligence; Alastair Campbell’s own private diaries talking
of “this massive issue of trust”.

Most people in the Westminster village expected Hutton to be critical of the
BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, but we expected he would at least be equally
critical of Number 10. Gilligan had made mistakes, that was clear, but they
weren’t quite on the same scale as taking the country to war on a false pretext.

But no. Lord Hutton took aim, fired and shot the messengers. The BBC’s
director general, Greg Dyke, and the chairman of the board of governors, Gavyn
Davies, (both New Labour men) resigned after Hutton condemned the infamous Today
broadcast which had suggested that the government “probably” knew that the 45
minute claim was wrong.

Andrew Gilligan left a little later – only to walk into the arms of the
right-wing Spectator magazine, rather confounding the claim that the BBC is a
hotbed of lefties.

The BBC was shaken to its core and some people even forecast its demise. But
the corporation recovered its composure fast – mainly because of the
selflessness of Dyke and Davies, who put the interests of the BBC above their
own careers and resigned promptly .

The BBC moved on. But that extraordinary verdict in January 2004 is seared
into the memory of everyone in political journalism: the way Hutton talked of
“weapons of maars destruction” as if he were talking of War Of The Worlds; those
fustian half-moon glasses; the casual, almost flippant, way he dismissed the
journalism and gave the benefit of the doubt to the politicians.

Of course, people said afterwards that, as a judge who had served most of his
time in Northern Ireland working hand in hand with the intelligence services,
Hutton was hardly going to come down against John Scarlett, the head of the
Joint Intelligence Committee. Hindsight is a marvellous thing.

But Hutton turned out to be a whitewash too far. If Alastair Campbell had
really had a hand in it, he would surely have added some passages critical of
the government, if only to ensure that the report didn’t look too one-sided. The
public didn’t have confidence in the Hutton Report, and after some ill-judged
gloating from Campbell, the government quietly shelved it.

The Butler Report in July was more critical of the way the intelligence had
been handled in the run-up to war, although it didn’t seem so at the time.
Behind the mandarin language, the former Cabinet secretary was pretty damning
about the informal style of government under Tony Blair and of the way that
important reservations and qualifications had been removed from intelligence
dossiers in case they weakened the case for war. But the press and public had
had enough of Iraq reports, and the report disappeared into the silly season
only to resurface a fortnight ago when Lord Butler repeated his criticisms.

In the meantime, we had the Fraser Inquiry into the Holyrood buildings
scandal. This report exonerated the late Donald Dewar of any blame, even though
the former Scottish Secretary made most of the key decisions about the
architect, contract and location of the building. Fraser’s open verdict allowed
everyone to draw a line under the sorry “follyrood” saga – until last week, when
the lawyers started to draw entirely new battle lines in the Court of Session as
the great litigation begins.

Fraser, Hutton and Butler have undermined the authority of official reports.
But perhaps people expected too much of these inquiries. There is something
slightly infantile about seeking “closure” on complex political issues by
calling in an impartial father figure to adjudicate. That kind of resolution is
strictly Hollywood.

In the real world, it is up to the legislature – the elected representatives
– to hold government to account. If Tony Blair got above himself and started to
behave like an absolutist monarch, then it is up to parliament, not wise men to
bring him back to earth.

The final inquiry of the year, the Budd report into the fast-tracking of
David Blunkett’s lover’s nanny’s visa, was dismissed as a whitewash almost
before it was published. Sir Alan strained credulity to the edge of reason in
his efforts not to draw the obvious conclusions from the sequence of events.
Yes, Blunkett showed the letter to his civil servants; yes, they sent the letter
on; yes, the visa emerged 120 days earlier; yes, the officials at the
immigration department sent a note back saying: “Sorted – no favours but a
little quicker.” But no, there was no evidence that Blunkett had actually
intervened. Well, fact is stranger than fiction.

It is always difficult to prove absolutes – especially in politics. There is
always an element of doubt about individual intention. We will never know for
certain what was in the mind of David Blunkett when he alerted his officials to
the visa difficulties of Leoncia Casalme. Perhaps he only intended to cite her
case as an example of bureaucratic inefficiency. Seems pretty incredible, but it
is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

You see, all public inquiries are underwritten by an assumption that people
in public life generally act in good faith. This is why MPs are always referred
to as “honourable members” in the Commons. Whether it is sexing up intelligence
dossiers or fast- tracking visas, there is always an assumption that those who
have called the inquiry are, almost by definition, above reproach. The only
exceptions are the very cases where people in public life are demonstrated to be
liars – such as Jonathan Aitken and his bill from the Paris Ritz.

This is explanation for the most extraordinary conundrum of 2004 – the fact
that while people such as David Blunkett have resigned over relatively trivial
misdemeanours, the Prime Minister remains in office despite having taken the
country to war in pursuit of WMDs which turned out to be pure fantasy. Many have
died. The Middle East has been plunged into turmoil. Even the CIA concedes that
international terrorism has got worse as a result of the invasion.

But Tony Blair remains in office, apparently stronger than ever. Indeed,
commentators are forecasting another landslide election victory. The Prime
Minister is a Right Honourable Member, a Privy Counsellor. He exercises the
residual powers of monarchy, the Royal Prerogative. He always acts in good faith
and consequently cannot be brought to book unless his Cabinet and back-benches
rebel against him.

Or until his conscience demands his self-sacrifice. Neither of these have
taken place. Which is why the war goes on in Iraq, and Tony Blair remains in
office and in power. The story of the year is not Tony Blair’s refusal to
resign, but his party’s reluctance to hold him to account.